Therapy operates within a broader culture shaped by ableism—and clinicians receive little guidance on how to help clients with disabilities and chronic conditions navigate the microaggressions they face, or on how to keep disability bias from entering the therapy room itself.

Too often, disability simply goes unaddressed in treatment.

In this session, Dr. Rhoda Olkin—developer of disability-affirmative therapy and author of What Psychotherapists Should Know about Disability—will give you a practical framework for supporting clients living with chronic illness and disability. You'll learn how to:

• Assess clients' experience of microaggressions and understand how they are impacted
• Use strengths-based reframing and values prioritization to help clients manage microaggressions
• Decrease the chance that you perpetrate a microaggression — and how to repair if you do

Directly or indirectly, your clients with chronic illness and chronic pain have been told it's all in their heads—or that they simply need to manage stress better—by the very system that was created to help them.

It's medical gaslighting and institutional betrayal. And therapy can be a corrective experience—but you weren't trained for this.

In this session, Dr. Sacha McBain—medical trauma expert and co-author of Medical Trauma: Assessment Tools, Coping Skills, and Recovery Strategies for Survivors and Therapists—will give you multi-level, research-informed strategies including:

• Practical, research-informed strategies to restore trust and decrease self-blame
• A comprehensive toolkit for coaching advocacy, interpersonal effectiveness, and navigation of healthcare systems
• Actionable, ethically grounded approaches that go beyond general trauma-informed care

Of course, clients with chronic pain or illness have real, ongoing symptoms and legitimate health concerns—but many also have health anxiety that can worsen distress. You're left wondering: how much worry is expected here, and how much might be disordered anxiety I should treat?

In this session, Taylor Ham—author of The Health Anxiety Workbook—will give you tools to differentiate expected anxiety from illness anxiety disorder and address both. You'll learn:

• CBT and ACT interventions to reduce fear-driven behaviors, tolerate uncertainty, and engage with life despite ongoing symptoms
• A framework to avoid both overpathologizing and unintentionally reinforcing clients' anxiety
• How to helpfully respond when medically complex, anxious clients seek reassurance or hyperfocus on symptoms

Chronic pain is one of the most complex challenges clinicians face, with roots that often extend far beyond injury or illness. In this clinically grounded session, Dr. Benjamin Keizer explores how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma contribute to the development and maintenance of chronic pain in adulthood. You'll walk away with:

• A clear understanding of shared neurobiological mechanisms linking trauma, ACEs, and pain
• Practical strategies for screening trauma in chronic pain populations
• Trauma-informed interventions that address the pain–trauma feedback loop

When clients' physical symptoms don't follow predictable patterns and a clear diagnosis is delayed or never comes, they live in a state of ongoing uncertainty. Without specialized training, therapists can unintentionally cause harm by misunderstanding clients' focus on their body as avoidant, resistant, or obsessive.

In this session, Kanjana Hartshorne—specialist in trauma-informed, body-based, and relational approaches—will share keys to help clients regain trust in their own bodies, including:

• How to find a balance between solution-focused and relational work
• Tools to counter self-blame and shame when clients experience skepticism from medical providers
• Strategies for meaning-making in ongoing illness

Chronic pain is never just physical, and effective psychotherapy requires more than a single approach. In this clinically focused session, Debra Burdick integrates five evidence-informed frameworks to help you build a more complete chronic pain toolkit. You'll learn:

• How CBT-CP, ACT, Mindfulness, PRT, and Neurofeedback conceptualize chronic pain
• Practical, session-ready skills from each framework to reduce distress and shift pain relationships
• How to integrate multiple approaches without overwhelming clients or losing clinical focus

Psychotherapy for chronic pain has traditionally focused on helping clients learn to accept and live with their condition—assuming it cannot improve. But what if, for certain types of pain, therapists could do more than that?

In this session, Gabrielle Jacobs will show you how to determine whether your clients might benefit from new, neuroscience-based treatments. You'll learn:

• Strategies to gently guide clients to relate differently to their pain without damaging rapport
• How to determine the type of pain your client is experiencing — and pivot strategies accordingly
• Techniques for mindful somatic tracking and expressing avoided emotions

Chronic illness doesn’t just affect the patient. It reshapes the entire support system.

Caregiving stress, shifting roles, identity changes, and relationship strain often become some of the most challenging parts of the experience. In this practical session, you’ll learn how to address the relational impact of illness and support both patients and the people who care for them.

• Identify common relational stressors that emerge in chronic illness, including role changes, caregiver burnout, and loss of independence
• Use practical clinical interventions to support patients while also working effectively with partners, families, and caregivers
• Help support systems adapt to the long-term emotional and psychological impact of chronic illness while maintaining connection, communication, and resilience

Chronic pain and grief often show up together in clinical practice—but they're rarely treated that way. Too often, emotional loss and physical pain are minimized, misunderstood, or addressed in isolation.

In this session, you'll learn how grief and chronic pain interact—and how to translate that insight into more effective clinical care. You'll discover how to:

• Recognize the shared neurobiology linking grief and chronic pain
• Identify when unresolved grief is amplifying somatic distress
• Implement powerful meaning-centered strategies to support healing

Decades of pain neuroscience have reshaped how chronic pain is understood, yet many clients still rely on pills and procedures as their primary solution. In this applied session, Dr. Carly Hunt translates the latest research into practical clinical strategies. You'll learn:

• How to explain pain neuroscience in motivating, client-friendly language
• Brain-retraining and behavioral strategies targeting stress, reward, and fear of movement
• How to guide clients in building a realistic, science-backed pain self-management plan

Chronic pain is everywhere in clinical practice—yet many persistent pain conditions cannot be explained by injury or tissue damage alone. New advances in brain imaging show that many chronic pain conditions are rooted in changes in brain networks. In this session, you'll learn how a network neuroscience model is reshaping how clinicians understand and treat chronic pain. You'll learn how to:

• Recognize when pain is driven by nervous system sensitization rather than ongoing injury
• Understand the brain networks that keep chronic pain patterns going — and how to target them in treatment
• Use practical techniques to help clients interrupt pain cycles and restore nervous system balance

Bonus details coming soon!

Bonus details coming soon!